Christopher Crawford: Documentary Photography

The Sheep Farm

Back in 2001, I stopped at a farm on Pleasant Center Road, south of Waynedale, to photograph the barns, and I talked to the old man who lived there. He had sheep in a fenced area next to one of the barns.

The old farmer got upset with me for scaring his sheep when I walked up to the fence, and for bringing two old metal chairs with me to photograph next to a shed on his land. He was afraid that I would leave the chairs, which belonged to my grandparents. "You make sure you get that shit out of my yard when you're done, I got enough goddamn shit in the yard already!"

After I returned to Indiana, I discovered that the farm was abandoned. It remained that way for a few years, but in 2012, I noticed that someone had repainted the barns and was fixing up the old farmhouse.